Invasion (14 page)

Harry watched Farrell jog back up the ramp. ‘We’re not leaving him, are we?’

‘No. He’s just going to watch our backs while we organise things on the other side. Besides, he’s got a radio.’

‘I thought that all radios were dead.’

‘We can use them as walkie-talkies
over short distances. He’ll be able to give us plenty of warning.’

They both turned at the sound of the Brigadier’s voice, echoing inside the crawl space. ‘Harry! Into the shaft, please!’

Harry got down on his hands and knees and began crawling inside the power unit. He shuffled quickly through and stood up, finding himself in a small concrete room with a steel door in the opposite wall. A single wire-meshed bulb lit the space from the low ceiling above. After a few moments Gibson, Nasser and Brooks had made their way through, dusting themselves off as they stood up.

‘Farrell is watching
our six, Boss. He’s got the code to seal both hatches.’

‘Very good, Mike.’ Forsythe turned and walked towards a small numeric keypad set into the wall. He punched a sequence of buttons and Harry heard a faint whirring noise then an audible metallic click. He looked up as the bulb above their heads dimmed slightly.

‘I’m getting claustrophobic
already,’ muttered Harry nervously.

‘I’ve got a cure for that. Follow me.’ Forsythe took a couple of steps and pulled the steel door open. He stepped to one side. ‘After you,’ he said, motioning Harry through the door. Harry gratefully complied, finding himself standing on a wide metal gantry. He looked down.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Allah
be praised!
He was amazed and overjoyed that he’d made it this far, into the very lair of the enemy. It had taken years of hard work, both physical and mental, not to mention the humiliation, the deceit, the loss of his family and friends, the isolation. Shortly, all that would be at an end. The war had begun and soon his Brothers would arrive on the shores of the Infidel.

He had engineered his place here with the Sabre team, hoping against hope that the regimental rotations would place him in Whitehall on this day. They did, and he had thanked Allah profusely. It was a sign, of course; a sign that his mission was a righteous one. And now he was here, standing on the steel gantry, alongside the Prime Minister. Like the others, he was amazed. It was truly an impressive feat of engineering, something that the Infidels had always been good at.

He thrust an innocent hand into his pocket and produced a stick of chewing gum. In reality, he was making sure that his one remaining transmitter pad was still safely tucked away. He’d been issued six of the small devices some years ago, but four had either corroded over time or simply refused to work. Now he had two. He’d just placed one in the generator room, directly above the false panel, innocently bracing his hand on the unit and steadying
himself as he crouched to enter the crawl space.

Roughly the size of a coin, the transmitter had a strong adhesive back that would attach to almost any surface. Small and unobtrusive, once adequate pressure had been applied to its coated surface, the pad would begin transmitting a low-frequency
signal that his Brothers should be able to pick up with their tracking equipment – if they were quick enough. The signal lasted for only seventy-two hours, after which the tiny battery would be dead and the signal would cease to transmit. No matter, he still had another. This one he would somehow try to attach about Beecham’s person. The signal would follow him everywhere and, with luck, he would be detected when his Brothers stormed this underground complex.

But he didn’t give it any more thought. It was all about faith, really. Faith had brought him this far, had silently comforted him through the long hours of darkness and through all the hardships of his training. Faith had provided him with the strength to live among these Godless people and so faith would deliver him back into the warm embrace of Islam.

A few feet behind him, on the other side of the false panel, the transmitter began signalling its presence. Trooper Nasser had every faith that his Brothers would not be far behind.

The bomb had taken out the top deck of the bus, blocking the junction of Clapham Road and sending terrified commuters running for the side streets. Black smoke spewed from the wreckage, blackened bodies littering the road. There was an ambulance on the scene, dozens of police officers, but still chaos reigned. Comms had gone, dropped out completely, no-one talking to anyone else. The screams and shouts from the junction, the sirens, the car horns as traffic began to back up on all directions
only added to the chaos.

Khan, Max and Spencer took cover in their van, watching the horror unfold a hundred yards away. The upper deck of the bus was missing and there were several cars on fire around it. Those who hadn’t abandoned their vehicles were lying dead or injured inside them. People were running everywhere, along the streets, over cars, trampling
others underfoot in an effort to escape. Khan punched the door in frustration, startling the others. Target One had something to do with this. The respectful farewell at the mosque in Morden, dumping his surveillance, a bystander shot in cold blood, just yards from where they were now parked. And now this. It was all beginning
to add up.

‘Get us out of here, Max. There’s nothing we can do. Blues and twos, yeah?’

‘I’m on it.’ Max fired the engine into life, reaching
under the dashboard and flicking on the blue and red emergency lights. It wasn’t something they did often, but this was an emergency. Besides, they didn’t want to be mistaken for terrorists by a nervous cop armed with an assault rifle. Max swung the van around and put his foot down, leaving the carnage behind them, strobe lights and siren carving a path through the traffic and growing crowds of rubberneckers.

‘Where to?’

‘Millbank,’ Khan said. ‘Let’s find out what the hell’s going on.’

Max swung the van hard around a corner, screeching left onto Lansdowne
Way. Almost immediately he began to slow down.

‘Shit. Look at this.’

A multiple-vehicle pile-up was blocking the junction of Wandsworth Road, pedestrians running in all directions. Khan saw a group of people hiding behind a low wall, bodies piled on top of one another.
What the hell…?

‘Go around,’
he
barked.
The van reached the junction and mounted the pavement, swinging around the pile-up and into Wandsworth Road. Max stamped heavily on the brakes and Khan fell forward against the dashboard.

‘Bloody hell, Max!’ he shouted.

Max pointed through the windscreen. On the road, as far as they could see, scores of vehicles had been abandoned, their doors hanging open. Several were burning as other vehicles tried to weave through the smoke and wreckage, hampered by the obstacles and bodies scattered across the road. Further down towards Vauxhall, a petrol station was burning, a huge wall of flame licking hungrily
around the overhead canopy. Through the flames, Khan could make out the incinerated shells of several vehicles, and a column of black smoke boiled into the air.

Something clanged off the van’s
bodywork. Khan flipped off the van’s emergency lights.

‘We’re taking fire! Turn around, find another way!’

In his haste, Max stalled the vehicle. Another round ricocheted off the bonnet.
‘Shit!’

‘C’mon Max!’ screamed Khan. He registered movement from the corner of his eye and saw a figure emerge from a convenience store on his left, not more than twenty yards away. The man was walking quickly towards them, wearing a desert pattern combat jacket and black jeans. The weapon he was bringing
up to his shoulder was a black assault rifle. Before anyone could react, the man opened fire. Khan just made it, ducking below the dashboard as the side window and windscreen exploded in a shower of glass. The noise from the weapon was deafening. Bullets hammered the van, ricocheting
off the Kevlar-lined
walls and burying themselves into anything that would yield to their deadly velocity. Like Max.

Khan, pistol in hand, suddenly realised that he hadn’t got down in time. His eyes travelled upwards. Max’s face was unrecognisable, as if it had been stoved in with a giant hammer. Surprisingly, there was very little blood, but Khan could see wisps of smoke rising from the wound in his face. He turned away quickly. The gunman was probably closing on them, carefully skirting the van. Maybe he’d seen Khan duck down and was just waiting for an opportunity to empty another magazine in his direction. Maybe he had already walked away, in search of his next victim. Or maybe not.

Khan didn’t move a muscle, straining to filter out the sounds around him and pinpoint the shooter’s position. In the distance, he could hear a siren wailing and the roar of the petrol station blaze. Closer, he heard the pop and tinkle of glass exploding
and the dull thump of vehicle petrol tanks igniting. He realised he couldn’t hear any human sounds at all – no shouts, no screaming, no crying. It felt like he was alone in this nightmare. He couldn’t even hear Spencer in the rear of the van and he dare not even whisper to him. No doubt he, too, was trying to stay as quiet as possible.

There. The crunch of glass underfoot,
very close. Khan was down in the passenger foot well, his head below the window and his back pressed against the passenger door. He heard the scrape of a foot directly outside the van and twisted
his body around
as quietly
as he could manage. Khan knew he had to use deadly force and the thought of killing suddenly made him feel nauseous, but he had no choice. This was one of those ‘kill or be killed’ situations they’d discussed during his training. The instructors had spoken about it on the weapons ranges and in the classroom, and some of those guys had to make that fateful decision once or twice during their careers. There was no set procedure for it in the manual, but it didn’t matter in this case. Khan knew that the gunman would shoot him in an instant.

He twisted his head around, looking upwards through the shattered passenger window. He could see the flat roof of a building above a row of cheap grocery shops and liquor stores. Not the nicest area of town, remembered Khan. Then he saw something
else, a figure in the driver’s wing mirror, getting larger.

The shooter was only a couple of yards away, carefully inspecting
the van. Khan could see his head turning but the weapon was out of sight, no longer on the man’s shoulder. He seemed almost relaxed. Maybe he assumed the threat had been eliminated and was—

Suddenly the side door was wrenched open, light flooding into the rear compartment. Khan reacted immediately. He grabbed the door handle and threw himself out, landing hard on the ground. The shooter spun around, catching the barrel of his rifle on the door frame. Khan shot him twice in the chest and the man staggered, falling backwards inside the van.

Khan scrambled quickly to his feet, his pistol pointed towards the body. He noticed that the man hadn’t released his weapon
,
and was horrified when the shooter slowly raised himself into a sitting position, coughing and spluttering. Khan watched him in fascination; he was certain he’d hit him. The man looked up and their eyes met. In that instant, Khan saw the body armour under the combat jacket. Both men raised their weapons. Khan fired first, the round taking the gunman through the temple. He flopped backwards into the van, very dead.

Khan quickly scanned the area around him. With all the turmoil going on, he figured nobody had seen what had just happened by the van. One thing was for sure, this guy wasn’t working alone. Khan pulled the body out and let it drop to the ground. He climbed inside the van and knelt down beside Spencer. It was obvious he was dead. The
floor was slick with blood and Khan noticed the single bullet wound to the chest, probably hit by a ricochet.

He spun around and peered over the driver’s seat. To his right he could see a sprawling housing estate that ran for half a mile along the Wandsworth Road towards Vauxhall Cross. As he watched, he saw flashes coming
from several windows overlooking the main road and automatic gunfire rippled the air. The only people he could see were dead, scattered along the road. Nobody seemed to be taking any undue interest in him or the van, which was now obscured by a veil of smoke that swirled around on the light summer breeze.

Khan slid back out onto the road, crouching down next to the gunman’s body. He quickly searched the corpse. No ID card, no travel pass, no money, nothing. Khan studied his features. Dark curly hair, thin beard framing his jaw line, high cheekbones, slight build; possibly from one of the North African states. Arabian, then. He was dead, so no chance of a roadside interrogation. But dead men could still prove useful.

Khan holstered his pistol and stripped off the man’s body armour, strapping it tightly around his own torso. He picked up the AK-84, checking the magazine and making sure a round was chambered. He rifled the man’s pockets, finding two more magazines. He weighed the AK-84 in his hands, getting reacquainted with its feel. Satisfied, and feeling better able to protect himself, Khan turned his attention to his immediate dilemma.

He still had a major problem and that was how to get to back to the office at Millbank. Any further progress eastwards along Wandsworth Road could prove deadly. The gunmen in the tower blocks had the road covered
,
and from their high elevation could easily pick off anyone stupid enough
to attempt
passage. No, he’d have to wait until dark. He checked his watch. That
was in three and a half, maybe four hours. He’d have to find a bolt hole somewhere, keep off the streets.

Scanning the buildings to his left, Khan searched for an escape route. There
,
an alleyway between two store fronts. It may be a dead end but, then again, it may be just the hiding place he was looking for. He checked the street again. There was sporadic gunfire, but thankfully it seemed to be coming from much further up the road. Behind him, the Wandsworth Road continued westwards which, apart from a few hastily abandoned vehicles, looked relatively unscathed. But it was east that Khan needed to go.

As if on cue, the wind shifted slightly, drawing a curtain of smoke across the street. Khan used it as cover,
running to the side of the road and ducking between two parked cars. Keeping his head low, he checked the pavement in both directions, but it was empty. He turned his attention to the alleyway. It was maybe five or six yards away to his left, sandwiched between an internet café and a store front with steel shutters protecting its façade. Khan slowly scanned the area in all directions as smoke drifted silently overhead. He held his breath and dashed into the alleyway.

It was narrow, about thirty feet long, with a wooden gate at the far end topped with razor wire. Khan ran quickly along its length, his footsteps echoing loudly in the tight passage. He tried the handle; locked. He glanced up at the razor wire. It was rusted, thickly curled and vicious-looking. Khan didn’t fancy trying to climb over that, not in his light summer trousers and short-sleeved shirt. He tried the gate again, forcing it with his shoulder. It gave a little, but not much. He couldn’t risk shooting the lock out in case it attracted unwanted attention.

Two or three shots rang out close by and Khan spun around in alarm, raising his rifle. Smoke carried on the breeze, obscuring the end of the alleyway. Khan imagined figures behind it, armed, angry, searching him out. He was trapped like a rat in a pipe. He turned his attention back to the gate and carefully reached over the top, threading his hand between the coils of razor wire. He groped around and found a dead bolt on the other side, sliding it quickly backwards. He tried the handle again and, to his relief, the gate swung open. Khan went through quickly, closing it behind him and securing the bolt.

He found himself in a small backyard. High walls surrounded
him on three sides and the ground was covered with rubbish and discarded building materials. There was a door to his left that led into the rear of the steel-shuttered store, secured with nothing more than a hasp with a thin piece of wood jammed into it. Khan removed the wood and stepped inside. He stood quite still, listening. There were no other sounds apart from muffled noises coming from the street outside.

In the dim light, Khan noticed that the walls had been recently plastered and decorated. There were two small rooms to his left and ahead of him a large empty space with a few bags of plaster and some building debris piled in the middle of the room. There was no glass frontage
or door entrance, just a wide aluminium shutter separating the newly-renovated store from the street outside. Light pierced the shutters, illuminating a billion dust particles drifting lazily on the air.

Khan breathed a little easier. It was just an empty retail shell, obviously still in the process of being renovated, but it would give him the temporary shelter he needed until darkness fell. He made his way out into the rear yard. There were several heavy bags of concrete lying amongst the debris and Khan dragged a few over to the gate and piled them against the footplate.

He returned to the store, securing the back door with a piece of discarded wire and a plastic chair wedged under the handle. It wasn’t perfect security but it would alert him if somebody tried to gain entry. He found a spot at the front of the building and lost himself in the deep shadows. Although it offered him short-term sanctuary from the anarchy outside, Khan knew he was effectively trapped, but he needed to lay low for a while. If he stayed here, hidden away in this empty store, the trouble outside might just pass him by. Later, he would make his move.